Temperament
by Cerulean.Phoenix7
Summary: That spark of recognition lights a fire inside of her.


Temperament

A/N: So this is my little venture back into the world of Castle fic after the season four premiere 4.01 'Rise' (which was awesome :D). This is set during the time after Kate awakens in the hospital through her time at her father's cabin and her eventual return to the precinct.

Also, it's a bit late now and this is unbetaed; I hope you'll be forgiving of any errors.

Disclaimer: Don't own, not in the slightest.

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><p><em>I lied... before, when I said that I didn't remember the shooting.<em>

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><p>It starts in red, great blotting chunks of colour that clump over her vision as she tries to open her eyes. Though with every attempt her eyelids grow heavy with the lead weight addition of her eyelashes. She manages to flick her eyes open once and she sees red... and <em>him<em>.

He's everywhere in that sea of red.

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><p>When she can open her eyes again-safely in the absence of lead-she's nestled beneath a canopy of colourful flowers. Her eyes bloom open as she takes in the various fuchsias, crimsons and golds nestled above her. The pain in her chest quickly becomes a distraction and she winces when she rolls her body too far in certain directions. The pillows against her back help, but only marginally.<p>

Then comes the infamous inquiry _why am I here?_ As she sits broken in a room draped in the white she thought was reserved for people with a few more pips on their rank, the images slowly drift to the surface of her thoughts.

At first it's mostly sounds, mingled with a blur of colour that she can't distinguish; then comes the rush and the entire event whooshes past her with the speed of a freight train. It sends a cold chill over her body, prickling gooseflesh over the pale skin of her arms. She gasps at the sheer shock of it as disbelief tries to drown her in her distress.

She had been _shot_.

She replays the images again in her mind as she ignores the beeping that begins to flurry next to her. She sees Montgomery's casket, the procession accompanied in black. She remembers taking the stand, and looking to a pair of eyes only feet from her.

_Castle_. It had been Castle's eyes that she'd looked to, and he'd met hers with little hesitation.

There had been a glint in the distance, and she had passed it off as a trick of the light (just once she wanted things to be _normal_).

Then she'd been falling, and pain had opened in her chest, mercilessly ripping her body open. She'd watched the sky pull its shroud over her, staring down with its azure intensity as she'd tried to stop the trembling of her bloody fingers. The pain was throbbing, consuming and she'd only wanted it to _stop_.

But she couldn't, for pain has no master but itself.

The next few moments she recalls with even more pain, not physical but mental. The cause is one of guilt, and the lack of response on her part makes her body cold.

Castle had come to her, cradling her in his arms like a child. It had been comforting just to have someone that _close_ when she was lying there bleeding, someone who she knew would stay. He'd brushed some hair from her face (she'd liked the way his hands subtly grazed over her skin, lightly like feathers). She'd tried to reach for him, for that last touch of human contact before the end, but her body was cold and heavy, and she couldn't move her bloody hand from her chest.

She remembers his eyes more than anything; there had been a desperate plea in them, as if he were holding the sum of all his good intentions in his arms as he cradled her there on that field.

_Stay with me Kate._

She'd wanted to tell him that she always would.

His hand had curled against the curve of her cheek, nestled amongst the trails of her tears as he whispered softly to her.

"Kate..." His voice had wavered, she remembers. "Kate... I love you."

After that she only recalls blackness.

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><p>Josh visits her, in the ceremonious way that boyfriends are expected to when their girlfriend is in the hospital. He even goes to the trouble of getting her black-eyed susans and orange roses. She knows it's a strange combination, but the enticing blend has always been hard to resist.<p>

She enjoys the soft caress of his fingers over hers, but she thinks of another (quite like feathers as she recalls) and this cannot compete. Her smile is weak, whether out of exhaustion or uncertainty she can't be sure. She simply understands that her heart begins to pound when Castle walks into the room moments later.

The entrance brings with it the fire of recognition, of which Castle is a strong carrier. She swallows back the bile of her inhibitions and apprehension; coherency is what she needs now, and she's not about to sacrifice time for composure's sake.

Josh quickly bids her farewell, but his words are muddled in the roar of her own nervousness. She could only hear his words echoing in her mind over and over again. _I love you I love you I love you_. She reads the expression on his face with the same ease that she does the front page of a newspaper, apparently Castle's abandoned his poker face for chivalry. What she at first interprets as concern quickly morphs into an awkward staring contest, and she realizes the state of her dishevelled hair.

"I must look terrible," she says with a dash of humour. He, of course, rebuts like always. It makes her smile.

He sits without invitation, but she doesn't really mind; she wants him close by. He's the only thing that has ever felt real to her, and right now she needs him here to be her tether to what is real and secure. But in the back of her mind lingers a gremlin of doubt, and it pesters her as she sits with Castle by her side.

He could let her in as much as he wanted to, but could she? In her relationship with Josh, she's felt as if the progression were slower, drawn out and warped like contorted plastic. Her smiles never seem to be as quick as before, and the silence that befalls her in times of distraction has become a frequent visitor. She feels barricaded, captured in the realm of her good intentions.

She knows that she cannot try to open herself to someone when part of herself is still sealed away behind the mask of her temperament. She will not allow herself to lead Castle into something that she cannot reciprocate fully, something that she knows will not only break her heart but his too.

"I just need some time," she says beneath the veil of her mussed hair.

He's accepting of her terms, but he doesn't yet realize that this is no typical parlay. "I'll call you tomorrow," he says and makes for the door.

"Do you mind if you don't?" She asks, and the sting in his gaze is immediate, the harsh whiplash of an unannounced strike. "I'll call you," she says softly.

There's still so much shock on his face, and his brow has fallen. "Okay," he answers, his words reduced to a mumble. Then he leaves, and she's left alone with the bitter pang of her own regret.

She needs time, time for the gravity of his words to stop pulling her towards the edge of sanity. She doesn't expect the silence between them to last for three months, but it does anyways.

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><p>In her books, her Dad's cabin would meet a few definitions of 'rustic', but he still claims it to be one of the finest pieces of retreat property this side of the United States. For that reason she doesn't complain, and after the first two weeks she even begins to like it.<p>

On the twentieth day she looks at her phone and has to resist the urge to call Castle, and the desire is so strong that her fingers start shaking. She wants to call him, but she's too afraid that what she has is not enough. She settles again beside the simmering pot in the stove, where pasta dances in the boiling water and accompanying red sauce bubbles vigorously nearby. She stirs the pasta once, twice and once more for good measure before plucking a fat noodle from the pot with a fork. She douses it with cold water and pops it into her mouth; the noodle almost melts in her mouth.

She's certainly thankful that her Dad had picked such good appliances for the place; one thing that she can never go without is some decent food. She piles some of the steaming pasta on the plate-its warm scent billowing like a summer wind in her- and drizzles some of the rich sauce over it. With a bottle of water in hand she makes her to the front door and onto the porch. The weather's perfect for sitting outside; the sun is only starting to set and a slight wind has scared the bugs away. Kate pulls up an Adirondack chair and plops herself down in it before digging into the enticing pasta.

The silence around her is such a sharp contrast to what she's used to; for the first week she constantly had some music in the background, just so that she didn't feel alone. On day ten she'd shut off the speakers, stepped outside and just listened; she's kept the speakers off since.

When her plate is bare and the sun has set behind the shroud of the Earth's cloak, she remains on the porch to watch the shift into night. It's a fascinating thing to watch; to her it's like coming back after the intermission of a play, and the contrast between the two is comparable to the flash of white on black.

She sits until the only light comes from a small light on the porch; she's about to retreat for the night when a fluttering glow catches her attention. A firefly, prancing about on the night's winds has come to her doorstep. It flits closer to the cabin (and with a slight dread she realizes) towards the light on the porch's roof. She almost reaches out to shoo it away, but fascination overpowers her impulses and she remains still. She watches the firefly drift towards the lamp, make contact and with a terrifying _ZAP_ the bug falls onto the floor of the porch in silence.

Darkness creeps over her then, the gloomy ghost of the moon's smile covered by a frown of dark clouds. There are a few moments where she can barely make out the space in front of her, caught in a limbo between comforting awareness and frightening blindness. Her heart beats a little faster and then the light from the moon returns. She looks up at the lamp, apparently the bulb finally decided to quit (five years probably was _too_ long). She looks back to the little firefly, which lies still and unmoving on the floorboards.

She tilts her head after a moment, did she just see? Out of curiosity she leans forward and sees it again, that little flicker of movement. This time, the bug's wings hum back to life as it flits away into the night, alive.

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><p>Day forty-five is the fiftieth time that she looks at the scar; it's an ugly, puckered bit of skin below her right breast. She runs her fingers over it gently, the sensitivity gone but the apprehension remaining; every time she runs her fingers over it she sees red blink into her vision.<p>

_I love you I love you I love you_.

She tugs her sweater back over her head and picks up the copy of _Heat Wave_ that she haphazardly threw in her travel bag at the last moment and sinks into the slightly lumpy couch in the living room. She opens to page one hundred and sixty five and continues on.

She still hasn't called _him_.

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><p>The sixty-seventh day is when she breaks up with Josh.<p>

It isn't a short phone call meant to be recalled as harsh and cowardly, but a few calm words that she gives him over a cup of cheap coffee at her breakfast table. She's realized that she can't have him while her heart is off in other places, trailing mysteries that have haunted her for years.

He asks her if it's because of _him_; she knows who he means. She says no.

When he walks out the front door, the air behind him tastes bitter like mint leaves, but she doesn't go after him. She never goes after a man she doesn't love.

"I'm sorry," she whispers as she hears the roar of his car awakening in the gravel driveway. When he drives away, the gravel crunching beneath the treads of his tires, she lets herself crumble.

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><p>The ninety-first day is when she returns to the precinct, her casual sweaters traded for sharp blazers and crisp blouses. She relishes the fact that her wound is easy to hide, but even two Tylenols in the morning don't take away the dull throb in her ribs. Ryan and Esposito are of course surprised that she's back so soon, but she wonders perhaps if anyone expected her back at all. In the process of unloading case files onto her desk, book after book of thick, crunchy files they ask about Castle.<p>

Castle... she never did call him. She feels a slight guilt sting her, but what bothers her more is that she feels a lack of worry over Castle; he's a grown man, he can look after himself.

Although in her case, she's less than certain; she's always considered herself independent, but when your life is placed on the precipice of loss you only want someone there to know that you're still living. She can't fathom looking at him after she's abandoned him for three months, but she can't imagine not looking at him again. She needs him in her life as much as he does.

When she finds him again (at a book signing ironically) she's not surprised that he's angry, maybe even bordering on _furious_. But even under his smouldering gaze she holds her ground. "I'm sorry," she says, and she feels like it's an over-used phrase on her tongue.

But even her own plea for forgiveness doesn't stop him from walking away.

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><p>It's in his company that she finally makes the penultimate decision, and it's by far one of her most hated. She tells him everything, about the walls that have fortified inside her and closed around her spirit. She knows that she's closing him off even more and it hurts, it <em>fucking <em>hurts so much because she wants him; she wants there to more than just the casual exchange of coffee between them, and she wants to know just how soft those cashmere sweaters of his are. She can't imagine a future where he isn't making witty remarks at half the things she says because by now she's used to it.

But she can't go forward into something like that when she's scattered all over the floor like broken glass. She keeps trying to pick up the pieces but every time they slice into her fingers and paint the shards bright red. She can't try and take him into her life when her hands are stained with the blood of her own troubles.

So he offers to take her in instead; he promises to be there when her walls finally come down and her mother's killer is found. The promise is carved thickly into the foundation of all that they are and believe in, and she can't imagine anything better.

When he takes her into his arms and she feels the cashmere brush against her skin she knows it's true, and that she will rise like that firefly. She closes her eyes as Castle tightens his arms around her, and she sees a sliver of the future glimmer before her as his words echo in her mind.

_I love you I love you I love you._

The future she sees shines with the golden hope of all that they are, and all that they will be.

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><p><em>I remember everything.<em>

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><p><strong>Please, please review everyone :)<strong>


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